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Tuesday, May 11, 2004

A Month of Soups

I remember an instance when I was a little girl; my mother was very offended by an aunt's comments that our family do not get enough "tong sui". "Tong sui" does not mean sweet soup in this instance. Pronounced differently, it is a Cantonese phrase for all sorts of soups. My mother is not Cantonese, so she did not grow up with a soup-centric diet like most Cantonese, but it was unfair to imply that just because we did not have soups all the time, our family were in any way undernourished. The remark made me realise how soup is such an integral part of the Chinese food culture.

Our favourite soup was not even Cantonese, my mother created the recipe herself. She would get a whole duck, and had it all chopped up, bones and all, and compact it into a sort of ball and place it, together with slices of Korean ginseng but NO Water, into a covered porcelain pot. The container is then placed on a metal rack in a bigger pot. Into the outer pot would go boiling water until the level is below the inner pot. The outer pot is covered and put to boil. This method of cooking is called double-boiling, whereby the very hot steam from the boiling water creates enough heat and pressure to cook the contents of the inner pot. The duck juices are released slowly, and the result is the richest, most aromatic ginseng and duck essence.

My husband is not even Cantonese but he loves soup. So we drink a lot of soup. I have taken pictures of all the soups we drank this past month. Some soups were repeated more than once. Most soups are clear and are pale coloured. The taste would differ of course, like how different wines would have their own taste.

Most of the time it is simple soups of meat and vegetables simmered over a few hours, usually we would boil the soup for an hour and then place it in a thermal pot to continue simmering for a further 2-3 hours. We would drink only the liquid, the remaining meat and vegetable would have all the tastes boiled out of it, although the meat would be quite tasty dipped in some soya sauce. Chinese soups are usually clear, like broths and consomme. If thickeners are used, it would be corn starch or arrowroot, like Sharks Fin soup, but never cream, butter or flour. Here are some examples.

ABC soup: Every home would have a variation on this. ABC to us means potatoes, onion and carrots, which are cooked with some chicken and pork. I like to use a combination of pork and chicken, the pork would make the soup very tasty and meaty, while the chicken would impart a certain homecooked aroma to the soup.

Bittergourd soup, composed of sliced bittergourd, pork, carrots and dried soya beans. Very 'cooling' soup. To make it even more 'cooling' some people use the miniature versions of bittergourd, which are so bitter you cannot open your eyes after biting into it.

Sweetcorn soup, another variation on the ABC soup. The 'whiskers' are also thrown into the pot, apparently it is very nutritious.

Soups can be sweet too. Here is a Lotus Root and Red Date soup, a simple recipe I learnt from my maternal grandmother. It has a clear sweetness and goes well with rich foods.

We also use the double-boiling method to cook herbal soups, like this Gnseng with Pork. Highly nutritious and very tasty. If only ginseng was used, we would boil the ginseng remains (called "cha") the next day, as the soup would still be very flavourful , after all, ginseng is very expensive so it makes sense to extract as much of it as possible.

Another double-boiled soup that I particularly like is Bird's nest with Rock sugar. Bird's nest is as everybody knows, made of the saliva of swallows. It is very expensive because these birds often make their nests high up in caves. The caves have to be picked off by climbers, a highly dangerous job. It is also a cruel idea to snatch the nests, because the nests are the birds' home, but by the time it gets to the shop, it is already too late, so I may as well consume it. It cannot be more cruel than other luxury foods like foie gras and veal, can it? All the girls in my family never say no to bird's nest, apparently it does wonders for the complexion. At $60 a pop, it'd better.

Here is the uncooked nests. Be careful when buying bird's nest. I prefer those that do not look too 'perfect' or uniformly shaped and coloured, those are more likely to be agar-agar or similar processed lookalikes. I also go to a vendor that I trust, usually the lady at Gainswell Trading at Victoria Street Wholesale Market. The more perfect (real) ones command a better price, but I would buy the less pretty ones because the price is slightly cheaper yet the taste is the same, since I am the only one eating it, I do not care too much about its appearance.

When we eat out, we would order soups if it is in the menu. This is Duck with Salty Preserved Vegetables, from Alex Eating House.

Another soup from Alex, this is Lotus Root, Peanuts and Pork. Reminds me of my paternal grandmother's Chicken Leg and Peanut soup, it apparently would make your legs strong, just like the chicken!

Here is a vivid orange soup, from Crystal Jade Palace at Taka. A soup made with Papaya, it is absolutely delicious.

More soups, this time from Crystal Jade Golden Palace at Paragon. This is one of their Sunday "daily soup" , the "Pig Lung Chicken Bone Weed soup." Very Chinese herbal medicinal taste, i.e. slightly bitter but apparently very nutritious.

Here's a more tasty soup from the same restaurant. Pig Stomach soup. The stomachs have been thoroughly cleaned up and well cooked, it tasted tender and the soup was meaty and peppery. One of their bestsellers.

And a sweet soup, also called Tong Sui for dessert. Tau Suan is a mung bean, and this soup is commonly found in hawker centre. The Crystal Jade Golden Palace people have made this soup even more tasty by adding gingko nuts.

Guess what? Tomorrow I will be eating dinner at "Soup" restaurant. Soup on....

Comments

A Month of Soups

I remember an instance when I was a little girl; my mother was very offended by an aunt's comments that our family do not get enough "tong sui". "Tong sui" does not mean sweet soup in this instance. Pronounced differently, it is a Cantonese phrase for all sorts of soups. My mother is not Cantonese, so she did not grow up with a soup-centric diet like most Cantonese, but it was unfair to imply that just because we did not have soups all the time, our family were in any way undernourished. The remark made me realise how soup is such an integral part of the Chinese food culture.

Our favourite soup was not even Cantonese, my mother created the recipe herself. She would get a whole duck, and had it all chopped up, bones and all, and compact it into a sort of ball and place it, together with slices of Korean ginseng but NO Water, into a covered porcelain pot. The container is then placed on a metal rack in a bigger pot. Into the outer pot would go boiling water until the level is below the inner pot. The outer pot is covered and put to boil. This method of cooking is called double-boiling, whereby the very hot steam from the boiling water creates enough heat and pressure to cook the contents of the inner pot. The duck juices are released slowly, and the result is the richest, most aromatic ginseng and duck essence.

My husband is not even Cantonese but he loves soup. So we drink a lot of soup. I have taken pictures of all the soups we drank this past month. Some soups were repeated more than once. Most soups are clear and are pale coloured. The taste would differ of course, like how different wines would have their own taste.

Most of the time it is simple soups of meat and vegetables simmered over a few hours, usually we would boil the soup for an hour and then place it in a thermal pot to continue simmering for a further 2-3 hours. We would drink only the liquid, the remaining meat and vegetable would have all the tastes boiled out of it, although the meat would be quite tasty dipped in some soya sauce. Chinese soups are usually clear, like broths and consomme. If thickeners are used, it would be corn starch or arrowroot, like Sharks Fin soup, but never cream, butter or flour. Here are some examples.

ABC soup: Every home would have a variation on this. ABC to us means potatoes, onion and carrots, which are cooked with some chicken and pork. I like to use a combination of pork and chicken, the pork would make the soup very tasty and meaty, while the chicken would impart a certain homecooked aroma to the soup.

Bittergourd soup, composed of sliced bittergourd, pork, carrots and dried soya beans. Very 'cooling' soup. To make it even more 'cooling' some people use the miniature versions of bittergourd, which are so bitter you cannot open your eyes after biting into it.

Sweetcorn soup, another variation on the ABC soup. The 'whiskers' are also thrown into the pot, apparently it is very nutritious.

Soups can be sweet too. Here is a Lotus Root and Red Date soup, a simple recipe I learnt from my maternal grandmother. It has a clear sweetness and goes well with rich foods.

We also use the double-boiling method to cook herbal soups, like this Gnseng with Pork. Highly nutritious and very tasty. If only ginseng was used, we would boil the ginseng remains (called "cha") the next day, as the soup would still be very flavourful , after all, ginseng is very expensive so it makes sense to extract as much of it as possible.

Another double-boiled soup that I particularly like is Bird's nest with Rock sugar. Bird's nest is as everybody knows, made of the saliva of swallows. It is very expensive because these birds often make their nests high up in caves. The caves have to be picked off by climbers, a highly dangerous job. It is also a cruel idea to snatch the nests, because the nests are the birds' home, but by the time it gets to the shop, it is already too late, so I may as well consume it. It cannot be more cruel than other luxury foods like foie gras and veal, can it? All the girls in my family never say no to bird's nest, apparently it does wonders for the complexion. At $60 a pop, it'd better.

Here is the uncooked nests. Be careful when buying bird's nest. I prefer those that do not look too 'perfect' or uniformly shaped and coloured, those are more likely to be agar-agar or similar processed lookalikes. I also go to a vendor that I trust, usually the lady at Gainswell Trading at Victoria Street Wholesale Market. The more perfect (real) ones command a better price, but I would buy the less pretty ones because the price is slightly cheaper yet the taste is the same, since I am the only one eating it, I do not care too much about its appearance.

When we eat out, we would order soups if it is in the menu. This is Duck with Salty Preserved Vegetables, from Alex Eating House.

Another soup from Alex, this is Lotus Root, Peanuts and Pork. Reminds me of my paternal grandmother's Chicken Leg and Peanut soup, it apparently would make your legs strong, just like the chicken!

Here is a vivid orange soup, from Crystal Jade Palace at Taka. A soup made with Papaya, it is absolutely delicious.

More soups, this time from Crystal Jade Golden Palace at Paragon. This is one of their Sunday "daily soup" , the "Pig Lung Chicken Bone Weed soup." Very Chinese herbal medicinal taste, i.e. slightly bitter but apparently very nutritious.

Here's a more tasty soup from the same restaurant. Pig Stomach soup. The stomachs have been thoroughly cleaned up and well cooked, it tasted tender and the soup was meaty and peppery. One of their bestsellers.

And a sweet soup, also called Tong Sui for dessert. Tau Suan is a mung bean, and this soup is commonly found in hawker centre. The Crystal Jade Golden Palace people have made this soup even more tasty by adding gingko nuts.

Guess what? Tomorrow I will be eating dinner at "Soup" restaurant. Soup on....